What is the best format settings to store a physical music?
I did look at Flac but the data is almost the same size as the uncompressed Wav and none of my devices or self hosted services seem designed to play flac files. Everything gets converted.
What are people using?
If flac is almost the same as uncompressed, I think something is wrong.
OP must have it set to the lowest compression level. All levels are lossless, but higher compression levels are smaller, at the expense of increased encoding time. Should be half the size or less in general.
Sheet music.
Sheet music carved in stone
If I had infinite storage, for archival I’d preferably use FLAC at its default level 5 compression. But like you and others, I thought the file sizes were quite big for a sizeable collection. So my personal compromise was AAC at 256kbps encoded with Apple’s QAAC. It’s small in size, vastly superior to MP3, and almost as universally compatible as MP3. There’s a reason why iTunes has stuck with it for so long, it’s an incredible encoder. I would never be able to hear a difference compared to lossless, at least on my equipment. So I went with it.
Flac 44.1 16bit level 3. Host with something that meets your needs. I have my files in jellyfin and navidrome and can then access the library remotely either through jellyfin web client, navidrome web client, substreamer, Finamp, kodi, etc. but this way if another amazing format comes up down the line I will always have my library in a good state to transcode from. Tag and sort everything with beets.io (or musicbrainz picard is great, I just like that beets is cli). This results in a library I can access on my phone, laptop, tv, carplay, etc
Technically you could go for 24bit but imo the extra file size isn’t justified. though one could make that argument for flac vs 320cbr mp3, transcoding 320 mp3 is more likely to create artifacts, thus the reason for keeping around flac
Alac may be easier for you if you use mac
Flac for me has been about half the size of wav, at least for normal 16 bit 44 khz audio. Maybe it’s worse at higher bit depth? Anyway bulk storage is pretty cheap. You could have Flac in your archive while keeping ogg or whatever on your everyday playback device.
Flac for storage, turn up the compression level. Transcode to an appropriate format when copying or streaming to a device
I’m transcoding everything to 320kbps MP3s. It’s much much smaller than flac, and I can’t hear the difference even if I try.
Best part is mp3 even works with older media players like the usb port of 201X cars
If you’re storing them for yourself I would recommend doing an online AB test to figure out at what bitrate you are capable of hearing a difference (assuming decent headphones or speakers). For some people anything above 256kbps is wasted (or even 128). If you find yourself in that category you can just use lossy formats and stop worrying about FLAC.
This is good advice right here. Unless you’re a dj (even then it’s overkill) and or have incredibly high end equipment (again, it’s probably overkill), just go with some high bitrate mp3. MP3 is incredibly compact, everything plays it, and has all the metadata needed. Seriously you can’t tell the difference.
